13 Days Until the Great Race: Pocono CSD

Today, two of my friends and I took the Stingray to a car show at Pocono Manor.  The show is called Pocono: A Celebration of Speed and Design (CSD for short) and features Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, DeTomoso, Vipers, and Corvettes.  Kevin brought his father's Audi R8 V10 along for fun (yes, the same car in my post two weeks ago) and Pete, a friend from college came up as well and spent the night before the show.  The show was not as well attended as it usually was, perhaps because of the impending bad weather (which never showed up).  Nevertheless, it was still a lot of fun and there were still some interesting cars.

The cars at the house before we left for the show.  We watched some of the Monaco Grand Prix while I let the car warm up.

 

There were about 15 Corvettes at the show.  We were the only C2 so we won "Best C2" by default and got a nice little trophy.

There was a pretty decent turn out of both old and new Ferraris.

Someone brought a brand new Ferrari 458.  The temporary tag stated that the car was bought only five days ago.  The window sticker was behind the drivers seat and it still had a fabulous smell of Italian leather.

I put some information down about the Great Race with the car and a bunch of people asked me about it so it was cool to see that some people knew about it.

We'll be leaving for Tennessee one week from today.  Now that I think about it, that will probably be the next time I drive the car.  I'm starting to get excited, I even started packing this week.  Dad and I will be spending this week getting the car prepped and ready to go!

16 Days Until the Great Race: Jumpin' Jack Flash

Perhaps this will be the final Corvette ad that I put on this blog, but I think I've saved the best for last.

Drove the Stingray on Tuesday night.  I love driving with the top down at dusk.  It's absolutely my favorite time to drive a convertible.  The car ran great.  My only complaint was that it cost $61 to fill the tank (Thanks for putting it back in the garage empty, Mom).  I'm really looking forward to bringing the car to Pocono CSD on Sunday.  It's always one of my favorite shows.  Hopefully the weather will be nice.

Three Weeks Until the Great Race: Music!

No, I'm not talking about the kind of music that's produced by a Chevy V8, I'm talking about actual music!  As much as I love the music produced by the Stingray's engine, Dad and I are assuming that we'll get tired of it somewhere during the over 1,000 miles we'll be driving to and from the Great Race.  So, I stopped off at Best Buy a few days ago and picked up a iTrip FM Transmitter.  For those of you that don't know, the iTrip just plugs into my iPod and I can play music over the car's radio.  The system works quite well, you can hear the song reasonably clearly over the engine too.

I hope everyone is able to see what album is playing on my iPod.  If you don't know what album it is, you are seriously uncultured.  Here's a hint: The drummer of this group has an incredible collection of cars, one of which is a Ferrari 250 GTO.

Dad is back and he said the Stingray will be going in for a pre-Great Race checkup on Monday.  We should have it back the next day.

25 Days Until the Great Race: The 1st Annual Moravian Academy Exotic/Classic Car Rally!

On Sunday I took the Corvette to my high school's first annual (we had so much fun that everyone decided that it will happen again next year) exotic/classic car road rally.  Dad is still in Canada so I took one of my car-savy high school friends, Alex, to act as navigator in Dad's absence.

As you can see from the pictures, it was a little wet so we only managed to get a total of five cars to come out.  It stopped raining right as we arrived, so Alex and I opted to put the top down and gamble with mother nature and the impending storms.  Luckily, it didn't rain at all!

The rules were a little different from those of the Great Race.  We were all given a list of directions and and given an hour and thirty-five minutes to complete the rally.  To make sure that we followed the route, there were questions about various landmarks along the way.  Points were awarded for answering questions correctly and for finishing on time or slower (not faster) than the given time.  Points were also awarded for placement after the hour and thirty five minutes.  We were the second to last car to leave and the rally I figured it was a bad sign when we both missed the fifth turn because we didn't see it.  But, we got back on track and managed to get through five questions and a page and a bit of directions.  I was feeling good about how we were doing.

However, we got lost for good when we started to second guess ourselves about if we had missed a turn or not and then our rally was done for.  We were travelling south on Route 611 and were instructed to turn right onto Churchill road.  After continuing on 611 for a three or four miles and not finding the road, we thought that we missed it.  So, we started to back track and decided to make that right onto CHURCH road instead of CHURCHILL, assuming that there might have been a typo (we saw another lost car a few steps earlier).  Obviously from that point on, we were completely lost when we couldn't pick up the directions again and ran into a few dead ends.  We squandered our remaining 45 minutes or so trying to get back to where we knew we were going when we looked at the clock and realized we had five minutes before we were supposed to be crossing the finish line.  We figured everyone else would be back by the time we arrived so we decided to put the pedal to the metal, hop on the interstate and go straight to the finish and guess the rest of the questions.  We arrived third to the finish but since we had decided to skip the questions, we ended up in dead last.   

Here's a picture of the group right before the start.  Kevin, (another one of my high school classmates) and his father Stuart, won the rally in their white 2011 Audi R8 V10.

Alex and I definitely got lost the worst out of the group but I think we also had the most fun!  We did learn several things about rallying (and following directions) so hopefully I can bring what I learned into use from this rally in early June.

Dad and I will be taking our '57 Corvette to the Wind Gap car show this weekend.  The next time we'll have the Stingray our for a show will be at Pocono-CSD on the 29th.  If I remember correctly, Dad said it's going in for service sometime next week for a pre-rally check up.

One Month Until the Great Race: Stingray as a Daily Driver?

One month until the Great Race...
I can't believe how fast these past five months have gone.  Seems like Dad and I decided to do the Great Race yesterday and here we are, one month until the race, three weeks until we leave for Tennessee.  My excitement is building by the minute and I can't wait to get on the road and start the trip.

I had a few chores to do on my day off from work, one of which had something to do with the Great Race.  So, I left the keys to the station wagon at home and opted to make the Stingray my daily driver for the day.  Here's a quick picture I took in the garage while warming the car up.

First order of business was to head to downtown Stroudsburg to pick up a camera case. Mine was falling apart since six years of hard use, and after almost loosing my camera to the case falling off at the NY auto show, it was time for a replacement.  No, I didn't stop at the liquor store.  I've got about five more months to wait until I can do that in this country.  I thought it made for an interesting picture though.

Second item on the list was to stop by Duckloe Brothers to photograph our donation to the 4th Annual Auction for Autism (which is being organized by fellow Great Racers Pat and Pat Brothers) before Dad ships it out later this week.  I wanted to take some more pictures of the car, so I took Route 611 South (which follows the Delaware River) to Duckloe Bros.  It was a beautiful day for a drive.  611 was relatively empty and I found an empty scenic overlook parking lot to take pictures in.

Here are some pictures of the chair.  It came out really well.  The detail work on the logo is incredible.

Last thing I had to do was stop at the Stingray's favorite watering hole to refuel.  $40 worth of 93 octane didn't even fill up the tank (I pulled in with about 1/8 of the tank left).  Hopefully gas prices will drop a little before the end of the month.

I wanted to have a little bit of a longer drive but I was stung by a wasp while getting in the car to leave Duckloe Bros.  That killed my driving mood to say the least so I just opted to head right home instead.  I lost track of the number of thumbs up and favorable comments that the car got while I was driving.  It always attracts a lot of attention wherever I drive it.  Even the elderly woman working at the gas station said "Nice 'vette? Is that a '63?".  I love driving it.  It would make a fantastic daily driver, and I'm sure many people used C2 Corvettes as their daily driver when new.  It's a very thirsty car and it's a hassle to parallel park.  Other than that, it's great.

On Sunday I'll be driving the Stingray in a road rally (well, more of a leisurely drive) organized by the parent's association of my old high school. I'll try to get one of my high school classmates to ride shotgun since my parents and sister will be leaving for Canada tomorrow.  It should be a good time.

38 Days Until The Great Race: Entry List is Up!!!

The Great Race website just posted the entry list for the rally.  We'll be the only Corvette and one of six Chevy's in the rally.  Our number for the race will be 25.  I was hoping to have 66 for obvious reasons but oh well.  25 is significant because 2011 will be the 25th year that we have owned the car (it was bought for a wedding present for my mother in 1986).  Looks like a great bunch of cars on the rally.  A few that stuck out to me were a 1969 Porsche 911 (I've always loved early 911's and Dad's got a '77 911S Targa), a 1964 Amphicar (I wonder if he'll bypass any of the bridge crossings), and possibly a 1960 Morgan +4 (I'm sure Dad thinks that he's a little crazy for considering taking a Morgan).

The link to the list is attached below:
http://www.greatrace.com/news/great-race-entrants.html

Just for fun, I've included a picture of a small sculpture we had made of the Corvette some time ago.  Dad had me take a picture of it when I was home two weekends ago.  My mother is pictured driving the car (while sporting her distinctly Canadian Tilley hat.  I rarely see her drive top down without the hat.) since it is her car after all.

41 Days Until the Great Race: Joan's Corvette Hits carpr0n.tumblr.com!!!

After driving the Stingray back to F&M with Dad, I submitted a picture of the car and Old Main that I put on last week's blog to the website: http://carpr0n.tumblr.com/.  It's an automotive pornography (don't worry, it's all rated G) website that I frequent which posts pictures of cars.  The website refreshes itself every few hours and you can view the picture right now on page two.  I'm glad to see that it made the cut.  However, it's caption "Study hard and get rewarded" wasn't exactly what I submitted the caption as ("Study hard, invest wisely).

Anyways, I have a few papers to write and a final exam to take and I should be home for the summer on Sunday.  Dad and I will finally get some quality time in the car and start working on the intricacies of rallying!